To be short and direct is something that I find difficult, but it's something I love in others.

If you can be direct while having some personality AND also courtesy, it might just be my holy grail of personalities.

I tend to drone on or go off on tangents all too often.

We call a person who overshares (especially stuff the rest of us don’t care about) a “loquacious” person. Don’t be loquacious.

Text messages are king, in part, because of that 45-minute phone call that could have been 30 seconds. Convey the point and be finished.

Blunt and direct talk will require confidence. Be careful not to be arrogant. However, blunt and direct talk may get you labeled as arrogant. I'd rather be labeled arrogant than loquacious.

Is anything more frustrating than an indirect apology? Just say "sorry" and move on. No need for a 10-minute exposé or a litany of excuses. It makes you look bad and it annoys everyone else.

Mark Twain famously said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Simple, clean, direct, confident. Beautifully efficient.